1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transportation system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a transportation system with integrated infrastructure and multi-modal transport vehicles.
2. Description of the Background Art
Most everyone is familiar with transportation infrastructure such as the highways, streets, roads and limited access Interstates. Although widely used, such infrastructure has many shortcomings. Vehicles traveling on conventional highways require the continuous attention and skill of the vehicle operator. These skills, however, can vary based on experience, age, health, mental condition, disposition, medication, drug influences, alertness, and distractions. Moreover, anyone lacking the requisite skill and/or attention can suffer dire and fatal consequences. Tens of thousands of individuals lose their lives in vehicle crashes each year.
Conventional highways are also vulnerable to weather conditions such as ice, rain, snow, grease, hydroplaning, silt, mud, strong winds, lightning, fog, and smog visibility, all of which affect both vehicle control and traction. Night conditions, visibility and lightning can add to the difficulty of the driver.
Conventional highways are also required to be much wider than the vehicle because even skilled drivers cannot steer the vehicle along a precise path. Broad shoulders are also required because vehicles occasionally run off the road, need recovery space, and sometimes require emergency parking.
Vehicles traveling upon conventional highways are also prone to accidents that result in the vehicle running off of the highway, hitting stationary objects, rolling over, going into water, or traveling down embankments. Vehicles can likewise be involved in collisions with other vehicles. Furthermore, because highways are typically built on the surface or on grade, both the highway and the vehicles traveling thereon present a hazard to children, pedestrians, pets, wildlife, and bicycles.
Highways are also undesirable because they require a broad finished asphalt or concrete surface even though the wheels of vehicles actually use only a fraction of this surface. This creates a large heat sink and results in undesirable water run off.
Conventional highways are also used as a passage way for a variety of municipal services, such as sewer lines, telephone lines, and power lines. The areas above and below our highways are often crowded. When services go into the ground they become less accessible, harder to find, create interference with one another and are subject to more corrosive forces. When services go overhead they create clutter and the wooden or concrete supporting poles are a hazard.
There is also the disadvantage that with all the problems of vehicle control, potential mechanical failures, highway conditions and the limitations of human operators the vehicles cannot safely travel at speeds up to the aerodynamic and physical potential of the vehicle.
It is an objective of the present invention to overcome these deficiencies by providing a transportation system with an integrated infrastructure and by further providing multimodal vehicles.